Riding Radio Waves

Baseline has learned that Walt Disney Co. is planning to use radio waves to track assets such as laundry, beverages and bus shuttles that ferry visitors around its parks. The Disney pilots are in the early stages--the company in some cases hasn't even selected a tag vendor yet--but the company does plan to use radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging throughout its parks.

Disney would not comment, and details about pilots by the company and other theme park operators are sketchy. Oklahoma City-based Six Flags Inc., however, did confirm that Memorial Day will kick off pilots at four of its water parks in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas and Jackson, N.J. Six Flags plans to give patrons wristbands with chips that emit radio waves. The wristbands can be loaded up with the digital equivalent of cash. Instead of digging through wet dollar bills, park visitors swipe their wristband past a reader and have an amount deducted from their stash.

I'm always amazed at how technology never rolls out how you'd think. This is convenient for users and gives the park great feedback on how rides are used, when and by who. I think the article makes an important point when it says that the difference between supply-chain uses of RFID and theme park uses is that supply-chain RFID is a way to drive costs down whereas theme-park RFID is a way to drive revenues up. That distinction is often useful for analyzing technology deployment. People with a way to drive up revenue will overcome obstacles and put up with early stage inconveniences that people merely trying to save money will not.